RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/teachers-unions-now-sending-lawyers-after-private-schools

In a move which is somewhat understandable on one level and mind-numbingly stupid on another, The Hayride has learned that the Louisiana Association of Educators is sending demand letters to private schools participating in the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence program, the state voucher plan, insisting that those schools pull out of the program.

We’ve obtained a copy of one of these letters. The full copy can be found here.

From the letter, an explanation of why the schools are being threatened…

http://news.yahoo.com/hamas-slams-palestinian-visit-alleged-holocaust-233948616.html Barhoum further called Bandak’s visit to Auschwitz, a camp where the Nazis killed 1.5 million people, most of them Jews but also other Polish citizens, during World War Two, as “a marketing of a false Zionist alleged tragedy.” GAZA (Reuters) – The Hamas Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday denounced […]

http://news.yahoo.com/sectarian-violence-erupts-egyptian-village-132314864.html

“SECTARIAN VIOLENCE” THAT’S MEDIASPEAK FOR JIHAD AGAINST CHRISTIANS IN SPRINGTIME EGYPT…RSK

CAIRO (AP) — New sectarian violence erupted in a village near Cairo Wednesday following the death of a Muslim man, prompting all the local Christians to flee, church and security officials said.

Tensions flare frequently between Egypt’s majority Muslims and minority Christians, but clashes rarely result in such a flight of an entire Christian community, about 100 families, said Ishak Ibrahim, who monitors religious freedom in Egypt for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

The violence in Dahshour, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Cairo, is the first case of sectarian clashes in the weeks since Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood took over as president. The election of an Islamist heightened fears among Egypt’s Christian and other minorities that their rights would be curtailed, and that they might become targets of extremist Muslim attacks.

The deposed regime of Hosni Mubarak kept a tight lid on Islamists. Since his overthrow a year and a half ago, violence against Christians has taken a turn for the worse, including violence by security forces.

About 10 percent of Egypt’s mainly Muslim 82 million people are Christian.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

If you read the newspaper, watch the telly or turn the radio dial to something besides talk or the greatest hits of the 70’s, 80’s and today, then you know that Romney’s international trip was a disaster. How do you know that? Well you know it the same way that Soviet citizens knew that their economy was booming and it would only be a matter of time before the oppressed slaves of capitalism threw off their shackles and bowed their arrogant heads to the hammer and sickle. They read it in the paper.

We read things in the paper too. Not very good or interesting things because the media is currently too lazy and cheap to do good or interesting things.

Modern journalism is indistinguishable from public relations. PR people do not investigate or report, they come up with a narrative, break it down into talking points and then sell it down by the docks. Their narrative is “Our company is great and the other company is bad”. When their company does something wrong, then it’s, “Our company really isn’t responsible for this” and “The other company is much worse than we are.”

When it comes to politics all you really hear from the media anymore is the same lazy spin you can find on corporate press releases. Read the press releases from a squabble between two companies, switch out the names of the companies to, “Obama” and “Romney” and imagine that Obama Inc. owns the media. Now you know everything you need to know about politics.

www.shmuelkatz.com

TOO BAD SHMUEL KATZ NEVER MET ANDREW BOSTOM WHO DETAILED THE CENTURIES OLD ISLAMIC JEW HATRED IN HIS MAGNIFICENT BOOK:
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History by Andrew G. Bostom and Ibn Warraq (Jun 5, 2008)

Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian who grew up in Gaza and later moved to the U.S. where she converted to Christianity, insists that the problem of Jew-hatred in Islam is fundamental to its belief system. “If Jew-hatred is removed, Islam itself would self-destruct,” she writes in a recent article.

Darwish traces the problem to Mohammed’s relations to the Jews of Medina. He tried to persuade them to accept him as a prophet after his own tribe in Mecca had ridiculed his pretensions. When they rejected him, in Darwish’s words, “Mohammed simply and literally flipped.” As much as he had professed to love them, he now hated them. He engaged in unspeakable slaughter, she writes, ordering “the beheading of 600 to 900 Jewish men of one tribe and took their women and children as slaves.”

That has left Islam, says Darwish, with a major existential problem. “Islam must justify the genocide that Mohammed waged against the Jews. Mohammed and Muslims had two choices: either the Jews are evil subhumans, apes, pigs, and enemies of Allah, a common description of Jews still heard regularly in Middle Eastern mosques today, or Mohammed was a genocidal warlord and not fit to be a prophet of God, a choice that would mean the end of Islam.”

http://sarahhonig.com/2012/08/02/zoabis-incitement/

THIS ISRAELI ARAB MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT IS AN OUTRIGHT TRAITOR…SIMPLY UNTHINKABLE THAT SHE IS TOLERATED BUT A GOOD INDICATION OF PALARAB SENTIMENTS EVEN WHEN THEY PARTAKE OF ISRAEL’S REAL DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOMS….RSK

It sounded quite unthinkable, but Knesset member Haneen Zoabi (Balad) blamed Israel for the recent slaying of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. “Israel is not a victim, not even when civilians are killed,” she declared in an interview with Channel 10.Zoabi elaborated: “Israel’s policy of occupation is at fault. If there was no occupation, no repression and no blockade, then this wouldn’t have happened.”

Her comments failed to rouse furor among the Israeli public, which has grown inured to brazen provocation from Arab MKs bankrolled by Israeli taxpayers. Our local media reported the story, but on the whole abstained from comment.

Zoabi’s rationalization of mass murder went right under the radar of the international community. We need only imagine the ferocious maelstrom had an Israeli parliamentarian dared hint that indiscriminately murdering Palestinian tots, their mothers, fathers and all other Arab civilians is tolerable because they have it coming.

The pandemonium would be nothing less than horrific, as would the bad press tarnishing the Israeli collective.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/312830/culture-does-matter-mitt-romney

During my recent trip to Israel, I had suggested that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it. In some quarters, that comment became the subject of controversy.

But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth. Many significant features come to mind: our work ethic, our appreciation for education, our willingness to take risks, our commitment to honor and oath, our family orientation, our devotion to a purpose greater than ourselves, our patriotism. But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom. The American economy is fueled by freedom. Free people and their free enterprises are what drive our economic vitality.

The Founding Fathers wrote that we are endowed by our Creator with the freedom to pursue happiness. In the America they designed, we would have economic freedom, just as we would have political and religious freedom. Here, we would not be limited by the circumstance of birth nor directed by the supposedly informed hand of government. We would be free to pursue happiness as we wish. Economic freedom is the only force that has consistently succeeded in lifting people out of poverty. It is the only principle that has ever created sustained prosperity. It is why our economy rose to rival those of the world’s leading powers — and has long since surpassed them all.

The linkage between freedom and economic development has a universal applicability. One only has to look at the contrast between East and West Germany, and between North and South Korea for the starkest demonstrations of the meaning of freedom and the absence of freedom.

Israel is also a telling example. Like the United States, the state of Israel has a culture that is based upon individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a democracy that has embraced liberty, both political and economic. This embrace has created conditions that have enabled innovators and entrepreneurs to make the desert bloom. In the face of improbable odds, Israel today is a world leader in fields ranging from medicine to information technology.

As the case of Israel makes plain, building a free society is not a simple task. Rather, it is struggle demanding constant courage and sacrifice. Even here in the United States, which from our inception as a nation has been blessed with freedom, we faced monumental challenges in harmonizing our ideals with our institutions. We fought a bloody civil war against slavery and it took a nonviolent civil-rights movement to bring political and social equality to all Americans. In these epic struggles we changed our “culture” and vastly improved it.

I have just returned from a trip abroad. I visited three lands — Israel, Poland, and Great Britain — which are defined by their respective struggles for freedom. I met with some of the greatest heroes of those struggles. I am always glad to return to American soil. On this occasion, I am only strengthened in my conviction that the pursuit of happiness is not an American right alone. Israelis, Palestinians, Poles, Russians, Iranians, Americans, all human beings deserve to enjoy the blessings of a culture of freedom and opportunity.

http://q4j-middle-east.com

“Mecca and Medina are the Arabs’ and Islam’s two holy cities. Jerusalem never was an Arab or Islamic capital, and there never, ever, ever was a separate Arab/Muslim entity of “Palestine” anywhere in the land of the Jews.”

I was watching Fox News’ Bill Hemmer’s interview of veteran journalist Marvin Kalb the other day.

Unlike some other well-known Hebrew journalists, who specialize in taking Israel to task (especially Israeli leaders who do not sing the American State Department tune nor prostrate themselves low enough to others’ “no friends, just interests” expectations ) while too often treating Arab issues and guests with kid gloves, I don’t recall Kalb being of this same ilk. I can’t remember him pulling the same, oft-repeated, duplicitous nauseating shtick of Larry King, Mike Wallace, Wolf Blitzer, or their fellow dhimmi colleagues at places such as NPR, for example.

Hence my disappointment at Kalb’s response to Hemmer’s question regarding Governor Romney’s comments regarding Jerusalem.

Mitt, like other candidates before him, had endorsed Israel’s position that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, and therefore feels that the American embassy should be located there–not Tel Aviv.

While the essence of what Kalb said was true (the worst of Realpolitik at play), hearing him (or any Jew) say it still enraged me. They were words I would have expected coming out of the mouths of Larry King, The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, or the “Progressive” media’s numerous other stick-it-to-the-Jews members of the Tribe. Somehow I had hoped Marvin was cut from something better, like say Phylum Chordata…something with a backbone. And, perhaps, he yet is. Maybe it just came out the wrong way.

But, when asked about the Jerusalem issue, Kalb immediately shot back something very much like the following…

“Israel calls Jerusalem its capital–not the United States (nor the United States State Department).”

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/07/31/my-israeli-roots/print

David Hornik added this in a note:

“I know about Bikel’s unfortunate attitude toward Israelis living in Judea and Samaria but didn’t include it in my article because it would have led too far afield; the article is of a poetic kind and couldn’t be manipulated.”

HOW GREAT THAT THE VERY TALENTED BIKEL INSPIRED ONE OF ISRAEL’S BEST JOURNALISTS TO MOVE THERE….BUT BIKEL HAS ALSO SIGNED ON TO THE ARTISTS AND PERFORMERS WHO BOYCOTT THE SETTLEMENTS AND REFUSED TO PERFORM IN ARIEL…IN HIS OWN WORDS: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/flashpoint/2010/10/and-theodore-bikel-responds.html

” Arefusal to cross into or perform in the territories constitutes nothing more than a declaration of conscience by Israeli artists whose stand I applaud.In my mind the city of Ariel is a thorn in Israel’s side and a serious obstacle to peace. A majority of Israelis share this view, even if the Prime Minister does not. Yes, I believe in the peace process and in the two-state solutions. Peace – even an uneasy peace – is preferable to a constant state of belligerence, which is what we have now and will continue to have unless the parties become serious. That will involve a serious resolve by the Palestinans to abandon violence toward Israelis and punish those who resort to it. It will also involve dismantling the settlements by Israel, as painful as this might appear to some.I am a Zionist, an ardent supporter of Israel, its defender when I deem Israel to be right and its critic when I deem it to be wrong.I am not, and have never been, in favor of boycotting Israel. Ariel and the settlements are another matter; their very existence is inimical to Israel.”

AND DAVID HORNIK’S COLUMN:

My American youth wouldn’t particularly have “predicted” that I would make aliyah (move to Israel) as an adult.

True, there were certain factors that could conduce in that direction. My parents were refugees from the Nazis, having fled Vienna as teenagers with their families in the fall of 1938. They conveyed that Jewish identity was important; we stayed home for the solemn holidays, did special things for the joyous ones. Bringing customs of another religion into the home — as some American Jews were already doing back then for Christmas — would have been out of the question.

But, on the other hand, both of my parents were from very secular backgrounds, and Jewish culture in our lives was meager compared to the immediacy and richness of American culture. I didn’t know that Friday night and Saturday were the Jewish Sabbath. I did gain a deep-seated sense that Jewish identity was important; but I was less clear on why it was important — knowing little about the Jewish people’s history, religion, literature, and so on.

A notable exception, an irruption of rich Jewishness into my predominantly American life, occurred when I was — I believe — six. It came in the form of a birthday present my father bought for my mother: the record Folk Songs of Israel by Theodore Bikel.

http://blogs.jpost.com/print/3656

I am constantly incensed that most of the International Community appears unconcerned about (or ignorant of) Israel’s efforts on behalf of the “other” members of its society. So here is a selection of recent news events that you can ever so politely thrust into the hands of anyone criticising the morality of the Jewish State.

Israel – there’s no “other” place like it.

I’ll begin with the Palestinian Arabs. Most people are unaware that each and every week Israel delivers over 28,000 tons of merchandise [2] into Gaza. In fact it was 39,009 tons last week [3]. The truth is that thousands of Gaza’s medical patients are treated in Israeli hospitals [4], whilst the terrorist mini-state is still firing rockets and mortars [5] at Israeli civilians. And on the small scale, Israel’s Civil Administration financed a summer camp [6] for 24 Palestinian Arab children suffering from cancer. These included kids from Gaza who, along with their parents, spent four days of fun in the Jordan Park. The park is run by the JNF, which ironically is boycotted by the BDS groups.

By the way – what’s all this fuss about water rights? Thanks to Israel, over 96% of Palestinian Arabs have mains water [7] – which is a whole lot more than the 10% who were connected when Jordan was supposedly looking after them.
Arab citizens of Israel now have their own television channel. After a four-month test period, the programming schedule of Hala TV, Israel’s first Arabic TV station [9], will broadcast 24 hours a day on satellite and cable. And another breath of fresh air has been provided with an Israeli government allocation of NIS 355 million [10] to improve the sewerage systems in Arab neighbourhoods across Israel. Congratulations go to Arza Haddad, the daughter of the late Head of the South Lebanese Army, Saad Haddad, who has just graduated from Israel’s Technion with a Masters degree in Aeronautics [11]. Arza fled to Israel from Lebanon in 1984.

Today, Israel has representatives” in Jordan assisting Syrian refugee children and infants [12] who have been injured in the Syrian military’s violent crackdown throughout the country. And here is some news that you are unlikely to here in the International press. Haifa mayor Yona Yahav confirmed on Al-Jazeera that the Israeli port of Haifa is a key trade route for Iraq [13]. Haifa is much more direct, cost-efficient and safer than the alternative – through the Persian Gulf.

You only need to visit any of Israel’s hospitals to see Jewish and Arab medical staff attending to Jewish and Arab patients in every department. “We are a team here, and there is no difference [14]”, said Palestinian Arab nurse Manar Igbarya at Hadassah-Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem. She said that she was accepted at the hospital because “all they cared about was how I do my job”. Further north, the Hospital for Nazareth celebrated its 150th anniversary. Now an Israel Government Hospital, childbirth educator Wendy Blumfield highlighted [15] that audience was Arab Moslem and Christian, Jewish secular and religious.

Israelis give more to charity [16] than any other country apart from the USA and there are over 26,000 charitable organisations [17] in the Jewish State. One of those is Yad Sarah [18], which provides equipment and support to the disabled, elderly, and housebound. Yad Sarah has just introduced an on-call communication service [19] that every Israeli can sign up to. When contacted, Yad Sarah’s volunteers see the caller’s health details and can provide advice, deal with emergencies or just engage in a comforting chat. Innovative Israeli non-profit organisation Tmura has contributed $6.3 million [20] to over 100 educational programs since it started ten years ago. Tmura’s revenue comes from Israeli start-ups who donate a few share options. These then become very valuable if the start-ups are taken over.